It is possible that in the new literary school year, one or more novels were born through artificial intelligence. I am not saying that this is the case, just a possibility which however deserves reflection. It is obvious that sooner or later, by laziness or by calculation, a writer will use this tool. It is in the order of things. An author does not always live in his ivory tower, he sometimes gets down to better smell the times. There is no doubt when he felt this acceleration of technology, which now allows, in a single click, to see a machine debit a whole speech in a flash of second.
It is to be feared that the machine, by the ease it offers, combined with its infinite resources, will eventually impose itself on the author. Will arrive for a time, if it is not already done, where the writer will help himself with artificial intelligence to carry out his romantic business. Just as an era where, from the first to the last line, the machine will write a novel of which it will be the only author. That day, literature will be dead, but which will care, if not a handful of illuminated exile in a very distant library?
Often the public makes a mistake. He thinks that a novel – and if possible a good novel – is above all a matter of ideas, of a fairly original scenario in its construction to captivate the attention of the reader. In doing so, he confuses literature and entertainment. One proposes to explore the shallows of the human soul, its most intimate springs, where the other only intends to distract the reader, lead him to escape from himself, to have a good time.
Everyone has novel ideas. Stop someone randomly on the street, absolutely anyone, he will tell you that he has a great story to tell, but for lack of time or talent, he can not get anything out of it, if not dreaming of the day he sticks to the task. It is because having ideas of novel is within the reach of the first comer. Just let her mind wander, the imagination will provide him with enough to establish a scenario with multiple twists and turns.
In this perspective, artificial intelligence is a great machine with stories. Tell her with big lines the story that haunts you and, in a jiffy, she will write you a more or less well put together novel. Proceed with a few adjustments, two or three retouching here and there, a cropping towards the end, and you are there, you hold in your hands a novel worthy of being offered on reading.
Obviously, in itself, the book will have no kinds of interest. It will be a series of dialogues, twists and turns, actions where the characters will evolve like automata, beings without flesh or soul, just good to serve as a pretext for a story being written. They will be like actors who would recite a text in an automatic way, without understanding anything about them.
I don’t know what a real novel is, I only know that it is anything but that. A novel worthy of the name does not have the primary vocation to entertain, at least in its only fun design. He must be a dive into a universe whose content has enough strength and mystery to make his reading interesting. Above all, it is written in a language that has its own music, its own logic, this indefinable and disturbing charm of the sentence, where the author appears as he is in himself.
That this void can appeal to a certain category of readers, it is quite possible. Just see what Hollywood cinema has become to be convinced.
A novel is above all a style. This style does not come from a machine, but from the intimacy of the author. He is the mirror of his education, his readings, his thoughts, his anxieties, his doubts, his aspirations, all that he is and all that he is not, the sum of his instincts, his impulses, his dreams, his fantasies, his way of being, to breathe, to love.
His sentence is the condensed of his being, his lighthouse, his spokesperson. In the way she has to be articulated, she looks like her, she is her supreme culmination. The music of a sentence is above all his being in all his infinite variations; She imprints the detours of her soul, she unfolds the very thread of her memory, her thought, her presence in the world. It is the story of its history, the transmission of an identity dedicated to remaining secret, but whose novel suggests some reflections.
It is the heritage of her personality, which is the fruit of generations that have contributed to its foundation. In this, it is unique. And because it is unique, it cannot be imitated. This is why artificial intelligence can never compete with human genius. Artificial intelligence has no clean history, it is just a summary of stories that do not belong to it. She does not create anything of herself, she has no soul, face, feeling, no idea. It is the void which, in turn, can only create a vacuum.
That this void can appeal to a certain category of readers, it is quite possible. Just see what Hollywood cinema has become to be convinced. But in itself, artificial intelligence will not create anything. She will copy. She will not tear anything in reality, if not some disembodied stories from which real life will be absent. It will be the opposite of art, an imposture that will engulf the human being in a nothingness of which he will have all the sorrows to come out.
